A Veteran of the Book-Banning Wars on the Importance of Speaking Out Claudia Johnson is a nationally recognized advocate for free speech, author of Stifled Laughter: One Woman’s Story About Fighting Censorship—nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1994—and winner of the inaugural PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “extraordinary efforts to restore banned literary …
Two sides to a story: why feminist retellings are filling our bookshelves “From Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Julia to Shakespeare’s Rosaline, the trend for a new perspective on a familiar tale is continuing apace. Authors and publishers explain what old stories tell us about today” Writers talk about an important topic. Giving a voice to people who …
Reviewer Jeana Jorgensen Interviews Thomas Cirotteau, Coauthor of Lady Sapiens: Breaking Stereotypes about Prehistoric Women The book Lady Sapiens “corrects mistaken stereotypes about prehistory, asserting the primacy of women in past societies and honoring the foremothers who advanced civilization with their art, knowledge, and power,” writes reviewer Jeana Jorgensen. “In reality,” she notes, “early women …
What We Gain from a Good Bookstore “It’s a place whose real boundaries and character are much more than its physical dimensions.” “You may have heard that we’re experiencing a renaissance of the independent bookstore, but the situation is far from rosy,” writes Max Norman in this piece about how independent bookstores enhance communities. Category: …
A History of the Lambda Literary Awards “a look back to the origins of the awards, the judging process, and the main controversies that have come up over the years” All about the Lambda Literary Awards. Category: Literature & Culture A List of Feminist Thrillers “To me, a feminist thriller explores the experiences of women …
Poll Shows Majority Oppose Banning Books About History, Race “According to a recent CBS News/YouGov poll, a large majority of Americans don’t think books that discuss race, criticize America’s history of slavery, or share different political views should be banned from school libraries or classrooms.” Categories: Censorship Feminist Phantasms: Recent Haunted House Novels by Women …
How Contemporary Literary Fiction Is Reclaiming the Insanity Arc and Humanizing Women Dee Das starts her essay with this premise: A hundred or so years ago, women were silenced into submission by psychiatry under the label of ‘insane’, every time they posed a threat to the models of domesticity. Any woman who didn’t conform to …
An Innocent Abroad: Joan Didion’s Midlife Crisis Novelist, short story writer, critic and retired English professor Scott Bradfield grew up in California but had difficulty “[l]earning how to write fictions set in California”: California is filled with so many vivid pleasures, smells, textures, and absurdities of human character that it feels difficult, or even impossible, …
Students Protest Book Bans in Pennsylvania School District Last week’s Literary Links included an article about censorship in a Pennsylvania school. Here’s a follow-up: “students have spoken up, demanding that materials by Black and Brown authors be reinstated in the classroom.” Becoming the Thing That Haunts the House: Gothic Fiction and the Fear of Change …
Authors say Texas state museum canceled book event examining slavery’s role in Battle of the Alamo This HAS to be the week’s lead story. A promotional event for a book examining the role slavery played leading up to the Battle of the Alamo that was scheduled at the Bullock Texas State History Museum on Thursday …
